Commentary on Frank et al.'s "Exploring the variability of musical-emotional expression over historical time"

Abstract

Music is often regarded as the 'language of the emotions' (Cooke, 1995), and since the early 20th century, empirical research into musical emotions has been conducted to explore the mystery of how they are evoked by music. In this context, Frank et al. presented an experimental study that examined the scarcely researched field of historical listening. Their study aimed to investigate the question, "Do modern listeners hear the emotional content in Baroque music that the composer intended to portray?". The results indicated that modern listeners placed the three modern excerpts in the expected quadrants of the valence-arousal space. However, there were significantly different valence and arousal ratings among the Baroque examples and the modern excerpts, and significant differences between paired examples (where Baroque and modern examples were expected to fall into the same quadrants) occurred. This commentary summarizes Frank et al.'s experimental study, discusses methodological considerations, and suggests possible refinements for future (experimental) studies on historical listening.